"Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" by Thomas Mann
The other night my step-daughter Violet was sitting at the far end of our couch knitting , while I sat at the other end working on my latest needlepoint project, with a big magnifying glass around my neck. I glanced over at my husband, Jeff, who sat between us with a long look on his face that read, “We are all going to be on this couch together forever, and there is no end in sight.” Across the world, families are spending more time together than ever before, and with that togetherness comes some highs and some lows. As we all struggle with uncertain logistical and financial times ahead, I thought of Thomas Mann’s book “Buddenbrooks,” which he published in 1901, when he was only 26 years old. The novel chronicles four decades in the life of a wealthy, bourgeois family of grain merchants in northern German from 1835 to 1877. Much like a modern-day soap opera, “Buddenbrooks” follows the threads of marriages, birthdays, divorces, deaths and re-marriages. For this particular family, the years bring loss of money, values and happiness. The book, which was highlighted during Mann’s Nobel Prize win, is said to be based on his own Mann family, and set in a town much like his own birthplace of Lubeck, Germany. The fact that he wrote such a rich novel at only 26 is impressive, considering it would be another 23 years until he wrote his legendary romance, “Magic Mountain.” In “Buddenbrooks,” Mann uses the structure of the family to exemplify the theme of artistic sensibility and creativity vs. financial success and wealth. If you are done streaming “Downton Abbey,” and are looking for a great 19th century family saga, look no further than Thomas Mann’s incredible “Buddenbrooks.”